Review: War Horse

Jeremy Irvine stars in Steven Spielberg's War Horse. He's the one on the left.

Photograph by: Handout
, Handout

A sentimental epic from Steven Spielberg about a beloved horse that is sold to the English army at the start of the First World War. We follow his adventures through muddy trenches, even as his heartsick owner (Jeremy Irvine) pines for him. It's hokum, but it's meticulous hokum.

Starring: Jeremy Irvine, Emily Watson and Peter Mullan

Rating: Three and a half stars out of five

Steven Spielberg's epic and sentimental War Horse is a beautifully made family film about the horrors of war and the abiding love of a young man for his horse. It takes us from the lush green fields of Devon, England, to the deadly barbed-wire battlefields of the First World War, with the widescreen scope of old-fashioned cinema. It's a bunch of hokum, of course, but it's meticulous hokum.

The star is an animal named Joey, whom we follow from birth to the trenches of France. He's a lovely horse -- "remarkable," people keep saying -- and, as he passes from person to person (Joey is a kind of bad-luck beast; his owners keep dying) we get a panoramic view of war and its brutality. This sort of thing is right up Spielberg's alley, and War Horse contains several thrilling and beautifully staged battle scenes, most memorably, a British cavalry charge into a German encampment that shakes the theatre with the thunder of hoofs, the deadly swish of sabres, and the ugly thunk of machine-gun fire.

Having an equine hero, however, tends to flatten the drama of the story (which began as a children's book and became a Tony-winning Broadway play before it hit the big screen). I like horses as much as the next man -- especially if they are part of a trifecta -- but Joey can't do much except nuzzle his various owners or run in panic, not that the human characters do a lot more. Like many children's stories, War Horse is knit together by a notion that love of animals is our common denominator, our hope for peace.

It begins slowly, with a flute playing over the picture book fields of Devon -- cinematographer Janusz Kaminski lights War Horse with an ethereal softness -- where Joey is bought at auction by Ted (Peter Mullan), a farmer driven to alcoholism by his own Boer War heroism. It's a foolish purchase, because the horse isn't meant for farm work, and Ted's wife Rose (Emily Watson) is suitably chagrined. But their son, Albert (downy-cheeked newcomer Jeremy Irvine) falls in love with the animal and teaches it to plow the field that will save the farm in a scene that looks like it was lifted from one of those Soviet-era dramas about noble workers striving for the homeland.

The relationship between Joey and Albert is the love story of War Horse: forgoing the movie's sweeping wide-angle shots, Kaminski films them in heroic close-ups that highlight a shock of chestnut hair and a firm jawline. The boy also looks pretty good.

But then war arrives, literally ("England is at war with Germany," shouts a man on a motorcycle) and Joey is sold to the army. It's a heartbreaking farewell, as Albert -- who badly needs a girlfriend -- pledges to Joey that he will find him again some day. "He's a horse, not a dog," a less sentimental sergeant says, leading Joey away. Hmmm: War Dog. No, it might be worse.

Joey's new owner is Capt. Nicholls (Tom Hiddleston), who promises to take care of the animal and falls in love with him in a different way: Joey will make a great mount for riding into battle. Eventually, over the film's two-and-a-half hour running time, Joey will move on to several owners: a couple of young Germans escaping from the war; a French teenager (Celine Buckens) and her wide and kindly grandfather (the memorable Niels Arestrup); a German private who cares for horses, even as they are worked to death pulling heavy artillery.

Joey's adventures are sometimes upsetting; smaller children may not understand the art with which the film's cruelties can be depicted without the animals being harmed. Older movie critics are similarly amazed -- and sometimes humanized to the point of juvenilia (Joey befriends a big black horse and volunteers to take his place on a dangerous assignment).

Spielberg walks a fine line between illustrating the muddy hell of trench warfare and turning away from the darker atrocities that would upset a family audience, but he doesn't forget his signature touch: the reconciliation of a father and a son. This is filmed against a coloured sky the likes of which we haven't seen since Clark Gable kissed Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind. There was a horse in that scene, too, but he was just pulling a cart.

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